The “monster” movie is so simple that it begs for self-important critical analysis. Any first year film student can tell you about how films like Attack of the Giant Crab Monsters are actually ways Americans of the 1950s expressed their anxiety about nuclear weapons. Read more …

After being blown away by director Christopher Nolan’s Inception, I decided to give his Batman Begins (2005) another chance. The first time I saw this film, I did not like it. Not one bit. I must have been distracted, because this time I loved it. Nolan breaks with the campy style of earlier Batman films, focusing on character development and motivations, which makes Batman Begins and its sequel The Dark Knight both psychologically dark and intellectually and emotionally compelling.

Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008) looks like director Guillermo del Toro’s audition for The Hobbit. (He got the job, but backed out because of scheduling problems with the studio.) The root mythology is Tolkienesque: In remotest antiquity, elves, trolls, and other beings shared the earth with mankind. The visual style is pure Peter Jackson: The elves look like Tolkien/Peter Jackson elves; the trolls look like Tolkien/Peter Jackson trolls; etc.

Guillermo del Toro’s Hellboy (2004) is grounded in a highly entertaining fusion of occult history and lore—including elements of Traditionalism, Esoteric Hitlerism, and even H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos—although cut and pasted and juggled around without any regard for truth.

Guillermo del Toro is a Mexican director whose films I have been watching since I learned he was directing The Hobbit, which is being produced by Peter Jackson, the director of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. As a LOTR fanatic, I wanted to get a sense of how Del Toro might handle The Hobbit. This is the first of three reviews I hope to write on his work so far.